Holding On
by ScribeOfRED
Summary: Jeff knows what the look on his eldest son's face means and wishes he didn't.


**SS, you have no one to blame but yourself.**

* * *

He won't sleep tonight.

Even though he spent a long day in contact with his lawyers as they work to amalgamate what was once a rival company's business under the Tracy Industries name, even though he oversaw a grueling rescue, even though he's tired, exhausted, he won't sleep tonight.

Not when he saw the look on his eldest son's face when the wall spun around after Thunderbird One landed.

It was too similar to the look on his eldest son's face after he was returned to the States, when there was a glaze over normally brilliant blue eyes that couldn't shield the horrors playing out inside his head.

He can't fix what's been done to his son, not completely, but he has done everything in his power to make things easier on Scott ever since then, and he isn't about to stop now.

So he stays up, long after the rest of the villa's occupants—sans Brains, perhaps—have allowed sleep to claim them, waiting in the communal office across from the line of bedroom doors for when he'll be needed.

He wants to be needed, as any father does—but not like this. Not for this reason.

Fathers shouldn't have to scare away the bad things in the night forever.

He doesn't blame Scott. Of course he doesn't. He's an army man himself, he knows the trauma soldiers of any kind have the potential for living through. Friends, comrades, brothers in arms—he witnessed the damage inflicted upon them by the enemy.

He witnesses it now as a low cry reaches his ears.

He's on his feet in an instant—well, less than an instant, but he's spry for his age. A few silent steps carry him across the hall, allow him to nudge aside the door, which he cracked open himself a couple hours earlier, creating enough space for him to slide inside. He shuts it softly.

Scott's room bears all the hallmarks of a man who spent time in the armed forces: there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. Papers are stacked in tidy piles on his desk, books are slotted onto their appropriate shelves, jogging clothes are spread neatly across the chair in the corner. The bed...

The bed is a rumpled mess that matches the rumpled mess lying on it.

Jeff doesn't have to worry about crushing anything delicate beneath his feet like he might were he to step foot inside Gordon or Alan's rooms, so he's able to focus on his distressed son as he tosses under his sheet. Scott doesn't sleep with heavy blankets piled on him—not since he returned from overseas by way of an honorable discharge.

There's no muttering, no garbled words (pleas), just heavy, erratic breaths and the occasional moan as Scott twists, winding himself tighter and tighter inside the cocoon of his sheet, which has torn loose from the end of the bed to tangle (bind) his limbs together, tied down by memories that are stronger than the soft, dark cotton.

Moonlight streaks through the sheer curtains to splash across the bed, highlighting the moisture streaking his son's face as he rolls back and forth, pillow shoved aside in a crumpled heap next to his head.

He drops to one knee next to the bed, reaching out with hands that have done this too many times over the years, and he tugs the corner of the sheet free from where it's trapped under Scott's shoulder when he rolls the other way. Doing so reveals the dark purple-gray splotch of deep bruising across his son's side and back. It hurts to know that this is Scott getting off easy compared to what might have happened.

Experience he wishes he didn't have keeps him from trying to wake Scott up, and he's forced to watch his son, normally one of the strongest men he knows, reduced to a boy lashing out at tormentors that exist only in his head.

Well. They only exist there now. Jeff made sure of that.

All he can do now is try to free Scott's body from the chains of his sheet whenever possible, hoping, praying it will be enough to sever the crueler chains lashing his mind to an old but far too real terror. Soft cries that are somehow more painful than ragged screams—and he's heard those too—escape Scott's throat. They are blades that re-open wounds in Jeff's heart that have never truly healed.

And then, just when he's wondering whether he should try to shake his son awake, spare him this never-ending torment, Scott bolts upright with a wild, choked sob that might amount to please, please stop during the light of day, except they are not words that will ever be permitted to appear except during the darkest moments of the night.

Scott throws a frantic, wet-eyed look across the room, hands flying up, palms out, in front of his face, and Jeff isn't sure if this isn't the most painful part: those gut-wrenching moments between conscious and cognizant.

The only thing for Scott to fight is what's inside his head, but isn't that where the truest horrors lurk?

If he were asked, he knows he could never describe the way relief overwhelms not just his eldest's expression but his entire body when he realizes where he is. "Home, safe, just a dream, not real," he whispers between each unsteady gasp as he drops back to the mattress and throws a hand over his eyes.

"Scott," Jeff murmurs, "son." He doesn't try to reach for him, only too aware of what it's like to be on the receiving end of the reflexes of a soldier, even an ex-soldier. It's not pretty, and he won't risk heaping guilt atop an already burdened soul.

Scott's hand drops away, revealing eyes that are too bright on the surface and too dull underneath. "Dad?"

"I'm here, son." But he waits until Scott reaches for him before moving forward so Scott can grab his hand to ground himself in the certainty that this is reality, not memory, once more.

"I-I couldn't save them, Dad." A new line of moisture shimmers silver across his cheek, and he clutches Jeff's hand as though it's the only thing keeping him tethered to Earth. "They wouldn't let me—there was nothing—they just... killed them... made me... I couldn't—"

"Shhh, son, you did all you could." He reaches for Scott, hesitates when his son flinches as though he expects he's going to strike him, an ingrained memory Jeff wishes with all his heart he could erase permanently. Scott's usually able to repress his instinct to flinch away from hands moving toward his face, but that's when he isn't exhausted, isn't fighting off crippling fear, isn't trying to separate then from now.

But Scott's mental strength is as formidable as his physical prowess, and it is with a visible effort he restrains himself from rolling to the far side of the bed. Wide eyes follow Jeff's hand with an uncanny steadiness that is in complete counterpoint to the irregular rise and fall of his glistening chest as Jeff carefully settles his palm on his son's cheek, traces his thumb over flushed, damp skin. "Breathe, son. Just breathe."

Scott's eyelids flutter as he sucks in a shuddering breath. A second. Third. Again. His fingers tighten around Jeff's wrist, and he reciprocates the gesture, anchoring his son so he won't be dragged away by a torrent of memories like he has in the past.

"I've got you," he promises. "I'm not letting go." Never again.

"You'll stay?" Scott whispers, as though he has to ask.

"As long as you need me."

He won't sleep tonight, but it doesn't matter if it means Scott can.


End file.
